Pope John Paul II’s failing health has cost him control of the Vatican, prompting a fierce internal struggle for control, senior church officials say.

The pope, spiritual leader to millions of Catholics throughout the world, suffers regular dizzy spells and has lost control of his critical faculties, London’s Sunday Times reports.

The pontiff’s losing battle with Parkinson’s Disease has left a power vacuum that’s being dominated by the hard-line, right-wing faction Opus Dei, which believes Catholicism is the only true faith.

“He is not capable of having the sort of conversations he once had,” an anonymous senior Vatican official told the Times. “He does not listen, and he does not communicate.”

Increasingly isolated and frail, the 79-year old pontiff rests most days and is usually asleep by 6 p.m, officials told the newspaper. Once a strong swimmer who enjoyed skiing until he was 73, the pope is reportedly destined for a wheelchair within two years.

As the full onset of his illness looms, the pope has cloaked himself with a loyal cabinet of clerics from his native Poland.

His absence of leadership has allowed the ultra-conservative Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — formerly the Congregation for the Inquisition — to seize control of three key Vatican departments: the sections responsible for making saints and appointing bishops, and the powerful press office.

Liberal Jesuit theologians charge that the pope is becoming a puppet of the right wing, pointing to his statement that Catholicism is the only true faith.

“The statement was evidently written for him by [the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith],” one Jesuit source said.

The Vatican’s liberal faction believes the Church has to adapt to changing times to remain relevant.

The schism comes at a bad time for the church, when many young people have left the faith over its hard-line stances against abortion and birth control.